The Meal of Happy

Delicious, not the least bit nutritious and it comes with a toy! A look at the Happy Meal.

Now there is some accurate advertising if ever I heard it. A meal that promises to make you happy and then does just that.

(It also makes you fat, but that's a discussion for another time.)

If you grew up in the United States, it's a fair bet that you had quite a few McDonald's Happy Meals in your tenure as a child and as a result, many, many Happy Meal toys probably lurked around your bedroom, waiting to stab your parents in the feet when they inexplicably slithered out from under your bed--where you had most likely stuffed them when you'd been told to clean your room.

Or maybe it was just my toys that lay in ambush for my momâ€¦my bedroom was booby trapped like that.

I digress.

The Happy Meal is, in my opinion, one of the best things to come out of America for children in the history of this great nation. You can argue the point if you like--I certainly won't stop you--but at least give me the chance to explain why I believe the Happy Meal is such a fabulous thing, nutritional issues not withstanding.

McDonald's answer to the Transformers. Wonder why it failed?

For almost five years as a teenager, I worked off and on in a little used toy store in my home town. That's right: I lucked out by being so charismatic I talked my way into a job where I got to play with toys all day. I worked there right up until the place closed, almost twenty years after it first opened.

The way it worked was simple. People would bring in their gently used toys that their kids no longer wanted, sell them to us and then we'd clean 'em up, fix or replace any parts that were missing and resell them. It was recycling at its finest.

People often brought in McDonald's toys and one of my duties--other than keeping the shop spic and span, counting puzzle pieces and making sure that Donatello and Michelangelo didn't get their weapons mixed up--was to take home boxes and boxes of vintage Happy Meal toys and sort them into the sets in which they'd first been released. With a published guide of all the toys McDonald's had ever released up until that particular year, I spent hours and hours toiling away with countless Ziploc baggies of all sizes, putting Cabbage Patch Kids here and Hot Wheels over there.

Imagine sorting a pile of toys like that every week. What a job.

Based on that experience, you could say I'm a bit of an expert on Happy Meal toys.

What I noticed in those endless hours was the pleasant nostalgic feeling I got whenever I laid my hands on one of the toys I'd had when I was a kid. Little disposable toys that no adult would look at twice, like plastic pieces of my history, shot me back to being six or seven years old in an instant. When you're a child, your idea of what's important and what isn't differs greatly from the viewpoint of an adult. That's one of the magical things about being a kid: even cheap, mass manufactured pieces of plastic can be something worth treasuring.

Even if you grew up poor, there's a very good chance that you had at least a handful of Happy Meal toys. My family's annual income was about three thousand dollars below the USA poverty threshold and I can still remember having a small basket of them that were played with on a regular basis and very, very special to me.

Sure, some of the richer kids I knew had bigger, better toys, but it was the one common denominator and equalizer amongst children. Everyone had Happy Meal toys. Everyone could relate.

And, in a post Happy Meal world, adults can now remember having them with a fondness that other adults can understand as well.

Happy Meals instill the value of the collector's spirit in each subsequent generation, I think, which is one of the reasons I still appreciate them. My own action figure collection was kicked off by a Batgirl figure that was released when I was a kid--a figure I still own.

Cut to over a decade later and my apartment would be rather bare if not for that little 'disposable' piece of McDonald's history.

It's buried on the shelf set aside for Batman's sidekicks (yes, I have a shelf set aside just for them--judge not that which you cannot understand), but it's there. Until that point, the idea that my favorite superhero's universe might exist in the world of toys never even occurred to me.

Another plus to Happy Meals is that, in some instances, they introduce a foreign franchise to a kid in such a way that they want to know what their toy happens to be about. As an example, one of the earliest licensed franchises that was tied to the Happy Meal was Star Trek.

How many kids put together that cardboard Enterprise and then got into Star Trek as a result?

I can personally attest to the fact that my very first real exposure to Marvel Comics--beyond a very general knowledge that Spider-Man existed--was thanks to the Marvel Superheroes Happy Meal.

I remember wanting that Storm so badly.

Happy Meals are now a part of the general consciousness, garnering even pop culture references.

You, my readers, must remember some specific Happy Meal craze that you collected, or a specific toy that you remember with an inordinate amount of nostalgia. Maybe even something that was the source--the very root--of something you love now that youâ€˜re all grown up. Maybe it helped to expand your affection for a franchise that you already liked. What was it?

If you can think of even one thing, then it should be apparent that Happy Meals are so much more than another example of the quick-and-disposable way of life that America seems to be famous for. The toys may not last, but their impact--no matter how small--does.

So the next time you're lamenting your kid's/nephew's/niece's/what-have-you's Happy Meal toy addiction and the little bugger's bizarre ability to turn up shoved under you car seat, stuffed under the sofa cushions or lurking just out of sight in an attempt to trip you and make you fall to your doom, try and remember that those toys are to that kid what yours were to you.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have a hankering for an artery clogging burger and fries in a smiling cardboard box.

BiteMeTechie is a professional freelance writer, aspiring comic book author, collector of toys-you-wish-you-owned and Batman aficionado. When not writing articles for places like RetroJunk and Suite101, she ponders just what McDonald's chicken nuggets were made of before they decided to make them from %100 white meat and you can probably find her hanging around the nearest bookshop posing such questions to passers-by on her quest for knowledge.

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Does anyone remember around Halloween time when the Happy Meal came in the plastic buckets shaped like a ghost, or pumpkin, or witch head? Then you could use the bucket to go trick-or-treating? I used to love those things. It made Halloween that much more awesome!

back in the 90s when the teenie beanies came out, the manager of a party store i worked at let me and a coworker go wait in line at a mcdonalds drive-thru to get her and others those damn little orange tagged demons. i didn't complain though, even though it was over an hour wait. they gave us the money to cover the HMs, we got to eat the food, and we were on the clock the whole time! sweet.my favorite HM toys were the astrosniks. they were little green martian-type guys in plastic/rubber resin figurine form. there is an article on here about em from a couple months ago.great article by the way!

I remember the mini beanie babies. that was crazy. I still have some of them. I also remember they would have hot wheels/barbies and a few times they gave away some retro happy meal toys. then there were a few times where they had a classic character train hook up thing.

Don't know if any of you remember, but I always felt Burger Chef's Funburger and [later] Funmeal beget the McDonald's Happy Meal. I can even recall when McDonald's first did the Happy Meal theme with a circus design. Then came the Star Trek one (the first franchised one), which brought forth many others.

I recall the Mario ones as well as both the Tiny Toons and Animaniacs ones. For awhile there were Disney ones until they briefly migrated to Burger King (which had their Kids' Meal). But I recall when even those without kids purchased Happy Meals just for the toys. I once had the McTransformer toys a long time ago.

I liked those mcdonald transformer toys, yeah they were corny but they were fun and those mario toys were the bomb, they could contain hours of enjoyment. I have fond memories with my grandparents and the mcnugget happy meal. Thanks for posted this article and keep more articles comin'

Great article. Hmm I was never a big happy meal fan but I loved the toys. I was from the generation of McDonalds Play Parks that rocked. I didn't even eat the artery clogging cheeseburger and fries I just jumped onto the McBurglar train and Grimmace jumpie! WooHoo!Love the style of your writing and the pics were cool. Like many have mentioned before, your blue hair is wonderful. I want blue hair.

happy meals were one of the most treasured things of my childhood. as a kid, they were usually the toys i got most, and so i usually had a big box full of them, which unfourtunatly got sold at a yard sale a while ago. my favourite ones were the sonic the hedgehog ones from the early 90s. anybody remember those?by the way, in the picture with the mario toys, i actually still have the turtle one. its in my basement right now.

i think i just thought of my all time favorite happy meal toys. it's got to be the super looney tunes toys that had bugs bunny, daffy duck, petunia pig, and the tasmanian devil with snap on superhero outfits. those were definitely by far my favorite toys from mcdonalds

Dude did you really have that cool of a job.?? That sounds like something out of a movie.. Happy meals were the best. I buy them for my 2 year old daugther all the time, ya im concerned about all the health risk that come with eating so much Mc. Donalds but she loves them and I only buy them like once a week for her.. Well excelent article.., Now im gonna start a new thread in Memory lane about a BK Kids meal that had the most awsomest toys, the TMNT toys.... see if anyone has any pics...

excellent article, one of the best i have read here. i loved happy meals growing up, and i can remember countless happy meal promotions that i absolutely devoted myself to collecting in their entirety. i dont have a specific favorite (maybe the power rangers one at the time, or the marvel superheroes one, but its hard to choose), but by far the most memorable for me is the beanie baby craze, when it was at the height of its popularity. being too young to drive and go get them myself at teh time, and due to the fact that they would sell out first thing in the morning the days they came out, my grandpa would go every morning they came out and get about 5 breakfasts i think so that all his grandchildren could get the whole collection. i have no idea where those beanie babies ended up, but it's one of those memories that will stay with me forever.

I was a big fan of the Barbie toys for a long time and probably had complete sets from a couple of the years they had them. Also, that Super Mario Bros. 3 Luigi toy makes me feel like weeping with nostalgia. I had that and loved it to death.

THAT FIRE GUY!? Come on man! The Fantastic 4 has had 2, count'em, 2 blockbuster movies and are working on a 3rd, and you dont even know the fire guys damn name? Johnny Storm - aka - The Human Torch. How can you not know this? ......lol. Just kidding.

You are the perfect woman. You need to be cloned to make sure all nerds get a copy of you. Awesome article, I have a huge tub of Toys from all kinds of kid's meals and every once and a while I run my fingers through them like they are a treasure chest of gold coins. And I smell them too and get high on the aroma of new plastic.

Oh crap! I had a garbage bag full of McDonalds toys by the time I was nine. Some of the toys in these pics were some that I had, the Batgirl toy I definately had. I also think I had the Hulk and Wolverine in Blackbird toys.

Wow, that is great. I actually had all the original MicyD's transformer foods as a kid. I collected all the super mario toys, Power Ranger Movie toys, the power ranger pogs, some of the marvel stuff which one of the best was the sticky spider-man figure that you could throw against a wall and it would cling to it and climb down. Got that after my gal-bladder surgery, even though I never ate the actual happy meal.

Wow, what kid didn't collect Happy Meal toys? Anyone remember the Loony Toons characters who had snap on outfits to make them look like superheroes? Like Bugs Bunny had the Superman outfit and Daffy had the Batman one. Wow, so many memories. I bet I still have a bunch of these toys!

Thank you BiteMeTechie for taking me on a stroll down memory lane. Funny you should mention it, the only Marvel Superheroes Toy that I had was the Storm action figure and it was one of my first stepping stones into the wonderful world of comic books. Furthermore, your article is well written and enjoyable to read.

Great article, memories I'm sorry, but I don't give a shit about health and stuff, the Happy Meal makes you happy. I f you want to be happy by doing pot or something, I think a better substitution would be a happy meal. I've sadly lost most of the toys thorugh the years, but there still was no better feeling that going to the bottom of that paper bag and getting your toy

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